Jiří Havelka
Born June 17, 1980
He studied directing at the Department of Alternative and Puppet Theatre at DAMU (Academy of Performing Arts in Prague).
For nearly twenty years, he was a faculty member at DAMU’s Department of Alternative and Puppet Theatre (KALD), and for eight of those years, he served as the head of the department.
Already during his studies, he directed and acted at Studio Ypsilon. In 2003, he became a member and one of the creative figures of the theatre ensemble VOSTO5. From the very beginning, his theatrical work has focused on collective improvisation as a method of creating original authorial productions. After leaving his permanent position at Ypsilonka, he collaborated with various theatres, including Divadlo Na zábradlí, HaDivadlo, and Divadlo Husa na provázku.
He also directed several international projects, such as the Czech-German EXIT 89 (2008), or the concert show Here I Am Human! with the British group The Tiger Lillies for Archa Theatre. He has also led several Czech-Canadian projects involving Indigenous actors.
Currently, his work is closely connected with the VOSTO5 ensemble, of which he is a member. This group has long brought pure improvisation, verbal juggling, parody, and mockery into Czech theatre, while also exploring dance and physical theatre. He collaborates with numerous Czech and Slovak theatre stages, and he is the author of both plays and film scripts for his own films.
In his original works, he consistently explores the possibilities of theatrical time and space, the creation of theatrical illusion, and emphasizes the uniqueness of theatre as a tool of direct communication. He searches for a new role for theatre in the age of virtual media and finds it primarily in the power of imagination, the principle of play, and shared physical presence.
He is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Alfréd Radok Award for Talent of the Year (2007) and the Award for Outstanding Contribution to the Reflection of Modern History (2016). In 2021, he received the Rudolf Medek Prize for exemplary efforts in bringing important—though often painful—topics of modern Czech (Czechoslovak) history to public awareness.
His original plays regularly receive votes in the Production of the Year critics’ poll and are invited to prestigious festivals in the Czech Republic as well as in Poland, Slovakia, Germany, Finland, Austria, Ireland, Spain, Bulgaria, Slovenia, and beyond. He frequently leads workshops at festivals, focusing on mastering the elementary elements of theatrical language.